Supreme Court to hear ex-IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt’s plea tomorrow

The Supreme Court would hear the pleas of dismissed Gujarat cadre IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt on Tuesday, seeking an SIT probe into allegation of misuse of state machinery during 2002 post-Godhra riots and the alleged roles of top BJP and RSS functionaries and some senior bureaucrats.

The applications were mentioned before a bench headed by Chief Justice H L Dattu by senior advocate Indira Jaising on behalf of Bhatt, who was sacked on August 18.

The IPS officer had filed petitions in the apex court in 2011 against the lodging of FIRs against him by the Gujarat Police.

One of the petitions pertains to an FIR lodged by a Gujarat police constable in Ahmedabad alleging that Bhatt had pressurised him to sign an affidavit testifying that the IPS officer participated in a high-level meeting after the Godhra carnage.

In another FIR, he has been accused of allegedly hacking then state’s Additional Advocate General Tushar Mehta’s e-mail account. Mehta is currently the Additional Solicitor General of India.

In fresh applications, the sacked IPS officer had also sought to implead top BJP and RSS leaders and senior IAS officers alleging that they were were part of a larger conspiracy to subvert ends of justice.

The apex court had earlier stayed the criminal proceedings against the officer.

In the applications, he has submitted that in 2011, he had sought probe by the CBI but now since the agency is under the control of the Centre, there was a need of an independent Special Investigating Team (SIT) to probe both the cases.

He has sought fresh investigation against him in all cases with a plea for direction to internet service providers to preserve all data he has put in the applications.